Advertisement retargeting is related to online advertising, and in particular, behavioral retargeting and CRM (customer relationship management) retargeting. Behavioral retargeting, also referred to as behavioral remarketing or retargeting, and CRM retargeting, are forms of online targeted advertising where online advertising is directed or targeted to consumers based on their previous Internet or offline activity.
Behavioral retargeting and CRM retargeting use accumulated data or prior knowledge of a user or customer, typically accessible through a CRM system or similar database. In retargeting systems, advertisers use offline CRM system information, such as purchase history and search history, to optimize their online advertising.
Known retargeting systems depend on the consumers' web browser cookie to identify them. The consumers' previous online and offline activities are keyed by the web browser cookie. The user has the option to disable the cookie on a personal computer, thus is essentially in control of his or her own privacy requirements. However, the web browser on most mobile devices does not support third party cookies, and most mobile device applications do not support cookies as well. Without a stable cookie, advertisers cannot identify a consumer and deliver targeted advertising to a mobile device.
Because of the widespread adoption of mobile device, such as smart phones and tablets, consumers spend more and more time on mobile devices. Different technologies exist to uniquely identify a user's mobile device, such as device fingerprinting, device unique identification, MAC address-based identification (media access control address), identification based on the MSID (mobile station ID) of the mobile phone, and the like. However, such unique mobile device identification techniques raises significant consumer privacy concerns, and may run contrary to legal regulations, especially because the user of most mobile devices, cannot disable transmission and interception of the MSID and the like.
Mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablets, have become a significant media consumption point for consumers, and many applications on such mobile devices are configured to provide accurate user location, such as latitude and longitude based on GPS systems built into the mobile device. Because of the privacy and legal issues mentioned above, it is desirable to provide an advertisement system and method based on a user's location information to deliver targeted advertising to customers and/or potential customers, without identifying or pinpointing the user based on sensitive private information.